Monday, 7 April 2008

en-route to hometown

i am officially part of the statistics. it was a drizzly day and we started off from home at around 2:30pm southbound. Made 2 stops to a kay eff see drive through, one in near um to get lunch and once more at the one after the toll plaza to get more to appease alyssa's appetite because we didn't buy enough. we reached km 277.5 (before the seremban R&R) at around 4pm due to those frequent stops. athyra was lying in her car seat behind me unbuckled while being entertained by alyssa and amelya was sleeping in the third row. i don't need to say much. pictures say it all.

it was a drizzly day. traffic suddenly slowed down possibly due to an accident that had happened earlier about 10km ahead while we were moving at around 80km/hr in the fast lane. i had enough distance between me and the car in front even though i had to gradually apply the brake while finally needing to floor it and was swerving to the right to avoid a collision before it came to a complete halt. for a moment i thought it was over when suddenly a loud bang was heard at the back. apparently the car behind me did not have enough distance and i was so busy watching the car in front that i didn't realise it was coming in fast.

and this is the perpetrator.

[IMG]http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o67/suhairims/misc/blogs/accident/villain.jpg[/IMG]only after i crawled slowly to the emergency lane, i realised how bad it was and suddenly remembered that amelya was sleeping in the third row. athyra was pressed against the door's mirror and my headrest and alyssa was crying out of panic. it was such a huge relief when we called out amelya name and she answered followed by a groggy face popping up above the second row seat, unfazed by the whole incident.

it was a multiple car collisions; i could remember as many as 6 with varying damages from a minor dent to a major wreck with fuel spilling onto the highway.

coincidently, my brothers were travelling around 30km behind us and finally reached the site about one hour later due to the jam caused by our accident. i managed to salvage all the bags from the crumpled boot and they picked up my family to continue the journey while i stayed behind to settle all the formalities. many thanks to god, everybody escaped without a scratch even with the exception of a little scratch that i have on my elbow, possibly due to squeezing through my jammed door after i parked the car on the emergency lane.

it was a long queue at the police station and i only managed to submit my report and met the investigating officer at around 8pm. when i was at the seremban bus station, it was no surprise to find out that there is no more bus available. fortunately wifey's sister whom has a spare car at the moment happened to be in seremban and i only reached my hometown at around 11pm incident-free, with the borrowed car.

even though the chassis of the car has definitely taken a beating, i am just thankful that everybody is safely home. amelya even managed to crack a smile when i took this photo, after the incident. there is nothing more to ask considering the margin that she had in the third row and sleeping through the shower of shattered glass unscathed. now i guess i have to learn to live without the car for about a month or so.